I LOVE MAY DAY!
During freezing, forbidding South Dakota winters, one begins to yearn for Spring and its delights. In grade school in South Dakota, I quickly formed a fondness for May Day which had two of my favorite things going for it: the wonderful warm weather and free candy. Unbeknowst to me in my early years, not all people put candy in their May baskets. I discovered years later that many in less fierce climates put in flowers (and I was horrified to find out that many people didn't even know about May baskets). In South Dakota, we not only filled the baskets with candy, but we expected the thrill of dropping the basket on a friend's doorstep, ringing the bell, and being chased and kissed if the friend were of the opposite sex. I guess we were coming out of hibernation in more ways than just one.
When my mother and I moved to California in the summer of '46 before I entered 6th grade, I had no way of knowing that one of my favorite holidays would be one of the things that I would forfeit as I had my toys.
My first May Day in California, I filled my May baskets, ran to the first friend's door, rang the bell and started running away. My friend opened the door and just stared blankly at my retreating back (of course, I was running away while looking back to see how close he was to catching me). No one I left baskets for that day had ever heard of the custom.
My attempts to encourage the celebration of May Day were abruptly stopped with the advent of the Russian Communists' May Day Celebration (a huge military parade advertising their emerging strength and hostility.)
This year May Day has been pre-empted for demonstations to show support of Mexican illegal aliens.
They wouldn't spoil their own Cinco de Mayo holiday! They ruined my May Day!
When my mother and I moved to California in the summer of '46 before I entered 6th grade, I had no way of knowing that one of my favorite holidays would be one of the things that I would forfeit as I had my toys.
My first May Day in California, I filled my May baskets, ran to the first friend's door, rang the bell and started running away. My friend opened the door and just stared blankly at my retreating back (of course, I was running away while looking back to see how close he was to catching me). No one I left baskets for that day had ever heard of the custom.
My attempts to encourage the celebration of May Day were abruptly stopped with the advent of the Russian Communists' May Day Celebration (a huge military parade advertising their emerging strength and hostility.)
This year May Day has been pre-empted for demonstations to show support of Mexican illegal aliens.
They wouldn't spoil their own Cinco de Mayo holiday! They ruined my May Day!
posted by Connie @ Monday, May 01, 2006
1 Comments:
At 3:11 PM,
Richard Myers said…
"This year May Day has been pre-empted for demonstations to show support of Mexican illegal aliens.
"They wouldn't spoil their own Cinco de Mayo holiday!"
Well, no.
May Day also has another tradition, International Labor Day. It isn't foreign, it started in Chicago. The immigrants who were marching on May Day, 2006, were following a very American (as in U.S.) holiday tradition that is today celebrated in nearly every country of the world, except perhaps for the United States, and South Africa.
The United States stopped celebrating May Day as International Labor Day (and as May Day, the Americanized version of the pagan fertility rituals, with May Baskets and the Maypole) in 1959, by an act of the U.S. Congress. They proclaimed it "loyalty day".
I don't think we should be unhappy if Mexican immigrants (who still celebrate May Day in their own country) choose to celebrate it here, where we have been encouraged by our elected officials to forget about it. The celebrations and demonstrations of Mexican workers have in no way stopped our celebrations, we've done that to ourselves.
In any case, i'm all for reviving all of the May Day traditions. We've held such celebrations in Denver for nearly a decade.
richard myers in Denver
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